A Mind Within Read online

  A MIND WITHIN

  A Dulcie Chambers Museum Mystery

  by Kerry J Charles

  EDMUND+OCTAVIA

  THE DULCIE CHAMBERS MUSEUM MYSTERIES

  by

  Kerry J Charles

  An Exhibit of Madness (Previous Title: Portrait of a Murder)

  From the Murky Deep

  The Fragile Flower

  A Mind Within

  Last of the Vintage

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A MIND WITHIN Copyright © 2016 Kerry J Charles. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at kerryjcharles.com or Edmund+Octavia Publishing at EdmundOctavia.com.

  Cover Image: David

  1501-1504, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

  This image is in the public domain.

  ISBN-10: 0-9894576-1-3

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9894576-1-3

  Edmund+Octavia, Falmouth, Maine, USA

  For Noah, because you see the world differently.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Preview: LAST OF THE VINTAGE

  About this Series

  About the Author

  Creativity takes courage.

  ― Henri Matisse

  CHAPTER 1

  It wasn’t a face. He never saw a face. It was only curves and lines and colors that seemed to move around each other and grow, from the top of the canvas down to the bottom. It never started with an oval, then eyes, perhaps a mouth next, the tricky nose placed in between, as artists throughout the millennia had painted portraits. His always began at the top and worked its way down. It wasn’t a face. Not to him.

  Dulcie watched in amazement. He began with one swooping stroke. A lock of brown hair starting at the top, sliding half way down the canvas. Then another, and another. Then eyebrows… eyes beneath. A nose… ears… mouth. Chin, neck, shoulders…. Each was perfectly rendered before he moved on to the next.

  She had entered the room only ten minutes before and he had barely glanced at her, yet it was as though she was looking into a mirror. He had captured her likeness so perfectly, so exactly. How was it possible?

  “Has he seen me before?” Dulcie asked without taking her eyes off his work. The woman beside her shrugged her shoulders.

  “Possibly. He has been to the art museum. He might have seen you in a newspaper article as well. Perhaps.” She had a soft accent. French, or possibly French-Canadian.

  The young man abruptly put down his brush and walked to the window. He was done.

  “What now?” asked Dulcie quietly.

  “Now it goes in the stack with the others,” the woman gestured toward the corner of the room. Dozens of paintings were propped against the wall, mostly portraits, from what Dulcie could see. Many looked as though they were of the same person: a middle-aged man. “Unless you want it?” the woman asked Dulcie.

  “May I?”

  The woman shrugged again.

  “I feel as though I should ask him,” Dulcie said.

  “You can try, but I’m afraid you won’t get a response,” the woman replied. It was not said unkindly, simply as a matter of fact.

  Dulcie crossed the room and stood beside the young man. She knew that he was fifteen. She didn’t look at him, she simply stood beside him and looked out the window as he did. He was still, silent. At last Dulcie said softly, “May I have the painting of me?”

  Nothing. Then, in one slow gesture, he turned his hand and opened it so that the palm faced up.

  “Thank you,” Dulcie whispered.

  The other woman in the room had not noticed. She was attending to her work, making sure that the room was in order, that the young man would have what he needed. Dulcie couldn’t know that his simple gesture was the first communication that he had made in months.

  #

  “What the heck is that?” Dulcie’s brother exclaimed as he entered Dulcie’s office in the Maine Museum of Art. He pointed to an odd assemblage of bottle caps. Thousands of them were stuck together, forming a human-sized Statue of Liberty.

  Dan Chambers never minced words, which always amused Dulcie. However, she knew his reaction would be common among visitors viewing the new exhibit.

  “It’s called Outsider Art,” she said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine that you had,” she said. “Most people haven’t. It comes from the French art brut which means raw or rough art. It can mean a lot of things, but it includes art made by people who aren’t professional artists, such as indigents, people with brain traumas, the insane… even children. Basically, they’re compelled to create, usually beyond a level that we would consider normal.”

  “Wow,” Dan simply stated. He hadn’t taken his eyes of the statue. “What’s it stuck together with?” he asked, leaning in for a closer look.

  “Gum,” Dulcie said.

  “You mean like gummy glue kind of stuff?”

  “No, I mean chewing gum,” she replied.

  Dan instantly pulled back. “Gross!”

  Dulcie shook her head. “Well, it’s completely hardened by now, silly. The thing is at least five years old. The police found it in an abandoned warehouse outside of Boston. They knew there was a homeless guy living there for a while. They didn’t bother him since he never caused any trouble, they said, but they had no idea he was making this,” she nodded toward the statue. “When he died on the streets, they went to the place where they knew he’d been staying and found the statue.”

  Dan was more appreciative standing a few feet back. “I wonder how long it took him to make?”

  “Good question! I have so many questions about it, which we’ll never have answers for, unfortunately.”

  Dan crossed the room and sat in the chair by his sister’s desk. He was still amazed that she was the director of the entire museum. She definitely had the brains in the family, although he had his own kind of common-sense wisdom. “So is this the beginnings of a new exhibit?” he asked.

  “Yes, and I’m pretty excited about it. I’m hoping that it will get people thinking about what really defines art. We always assume it’s Leonardos and such. But it’s much more basic to the human psyche than that. It’s expression and communication, and probably a lot of other things.”

  “Thank you for the lecture, Dr. Chambers,” Dan said with mock applause.

  She smirked at him. “Someone needs to broaden your horizons,” she said looking back at her computer. “I’ve got a lot of pieces coming in over the next couple of days,” she said, scrolling through images. “It’s gonna get busy.”

  Dulcie stood up quickly, making her brother jump. “Hey,” she said, “come down to my car. I want to show you something.�
�

  They left her office, walking by the museum’s front desk. Dan winked at Dulcie’s assistant, Rachel. She giggled. Dulcie rolled her eyes at her brother. “Stop that!” she mouthed.

  In the parking lot, Dulcie opened the back of her ancient Jeep Wrangler. She had known for some time that she should get a new vehicle, but couldn’t bear to part with it. Not yet.

  “What do you think of this?” she asked, pulling out the portrait of herself.

  “Aaahhhh!” Dan yelled in fear, putting his hand over his heart in mock terror at the sight. Dulcie swatted him. “Sorry. Had to,” he grinned. “But seriously, it’s definitely you. When did you sit for a portrait?”

  “That’s the weird thing. I didn’t. This is another example of Outsider Art. A young man, actually more like a kid – he’s only 15 – painted this of me today. He barely even glanced at me, and I was standing behind him when he made it.”

  Dan shook his head in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”

  “Yeah, I agree. He’s an autistic savant. He paints and draws for hours every day but hasn’t spoken, ever. Not that anyone knows about, anyway.”

  “Huh! I’d never be able to pull that off,” Dan said. “The speaking bit, I mean.” He looked back at the painting. “Or this either, come to think of it.”

  Dulcie glanced over at her brother and laughed. He was such an extrovert. She couldn’t imagine him not speaking. She closed the car door, carefully holding the painting away. “All right, back to work,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Dan sighed. I’ve gotta go scrub down the boat. I hate that chore, but has to be done or it’ll look terrible inside of a week.” He gave his sister a wave and headed off in the direction of the waterfront.

  Dan ran his own business, taking people on tours around Portland Harbor and Casco Bay in his small private yacht. Dulcie was his silent partner, and had invested an unexpected inheritance in his business to buy the boat. Dan lived on board and, with his natural storytelling abilities and ease with people, had made the business thrive.

  Dulcie watched him walk away knowing that his momentary dejection would quickly pass. He loved everything about that boat. She clicked the lock on the door of the Jeep, noticing yet another scratch in the paint. Bringing the painting inside, she carefully set it on a table in her office, tipping it against the wall behind. She stood back and cocked her head sideways as she gazed at it. Xander Bellamy. She had heard of him, but it was the first time that she had met him.

  Rachel knocked on the doorframe of Dulcie’s office and walked in. She stopped immediately when she saw the painting. “That’s awesome!” she said. “When’d you get that done? And why?” Her eyes grew big as she realized she’d just made a faux pas. “I mean, not ‘why’ exactly. But, it doesn’t seem like something you’d do. Have a portrait made. Of yourself. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing that,” she was stammering now.

  Dulcie turned and grinned at her assistant. “Easy, Rachel! No offence taken,” she laughed. “I know what you’re getting at. I’m not exactly the type for self-aggrandizement. I’d rather fade into the woodwork, given the choice.” She looked over at the painting. “But this has kind of a weird story behind it. Have you heard of Xander Bellamy?”

  Rachel thought for a moment. Her clear blue eyes squinted. “I know that name,” she said slowly. Then she snapped her fingers. “He’s the guy that was in the news a few months ago, right? Didn’t his father kill his grandfather or something like that?”

  Dulcie nodded. “Yes, and it was pretty sad. I just looked up the story. His mother had died several years ago, too. He’s autistic and doesn’t speak. His father was devoted to him but I guess the grandfather didn’t have much to do with them, even though they all lived in the same house.”

  “Was he the father’s father or the mother’s? The grandfather, I mean,” asked Rachel. She always tried to get the details straight, a trait that Dulcie loved since it helped with her work enormously.

  “The mother’s father.”

  “And didn’t he fall off a balcony or out of a window or something like that?” asked Rachel.

  “Yes, and there was some speculation that he was pushed by Xander although no one could imagine why. But then the father stepped forward and confessed that he had pushed him. They had been arguing, he said. It was all very strange and tragic.”

  “Sounds it,” replied Rachel. “So how does Xander fit in with this?” she pointed to the painting.

  “He did it,” Dulcie said simply.

  Rachel’s eyes were wide. “Really?”

  “Yup. And furthermore, he did it after barely looking at me, plus it only took him a few minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it. He started at the top, worked his way to the bottom, and never went back to change or touch-up anything. Just put down his brush and walked away when he was done.”

  “But how did he have the colors? Didn’t he need to mix them?”

  “He had a lot of paint on his palette already. The woman that takes care of him said that he’s been doing a lot of portraits lately. I saw a whole bunch in his studio that looked like they were all of the same person. He just used the paint he already had to do my portrait.”

  “Did you ask him to? Why did he paint you?”

  “I have no idea,” said Dulcie. She hadn’t thought about that. Why had he chosen to paint her? “Very good question. I have no idea,” she repeated quietly.

  “Well, that’s a mystery for another time,” said Rachel, adopting her businesslike voice. “Right now, we’ve got some logistics to figure out. You’ve got four more artists for the new exhibit with two or three works each, and then three more with single works, right?”

  Dulcie took a deep breath and shifted gears mentally. “Yes,” she nodded at the list Rachel was holding. “Could you do the usual with shipping and insurance and such? Do you have everyone’s contact info?”

  Rachel nodded, her curly hair bouncing. “No problem.” She turned to Dulcie’s portrait again. “Are you going to include this?” she asked. “That qualifies as Outsider Art, I’d think.”

  “It certainly does, but there is no way I’m putting a portrait of me in the gallery!” Dulcie saw Rachel trying to hide a smile. “So don’t even think about it!” Dulcie added. “But I do plan on exhibiting some of his work. It’s too incredible not to.” She sat back in her chair. “The difficult part about this exhibit is that every piece has a different story about the artist that made it. I’ll have to figure out a way to tell each story as briefly as possible.”

  “And tactfully, in some cases,” Rachel added. “Anything else you need from me for now?” she asked.

  Dulcie thought for a moment. “Nope. I think we’re good for now, thanks.”

  Rachel was already heading for the door, her untamable hair bobbing up and down and her quick mind eager to take on the next project. Dulcie noticed she gave the bottle-cap-chewing-gum Statue of Liberty a wide berth.

  #

  Adam Johnson wandered through the wine shop following his Portland Police Department partner and fellow detective, Nicholas Black, closely. Johnson tried to suck in his large stomach as much as possible and keep his arms pinned to his sides. He leaned over, ever so slightly, from time to time so that he could see an interesting looking label. A particular one caught his eye, and he gingerly picked it up. The label looked old, with ornate lettering.

  “Pie-Not… pie-not NO-wer,” he whispered to himself.

  “Pinot Noir,” Nick pronounced correctly over his shoulder.

  “Pee-no newarr?” That sounds even worse!” Johnson said, aghast.

  “It’s a kind of grape,” said Nick with a tinge of annoyance.

  “Hmm,” muttered Johnson, carefully replacing the bottle on the shelf. He shuffled behind Nick again as he moved to the next aisle.

  Nick turned to face him. “Don’t you have anything to do? You’ve been following me around for half the day now. I’m on lunch break, you know.”

  Johnson stare
d at the floor and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I know.” He looked dejected.

  Nick would have laughed but he knew his partner, Detective Adam Johnson, was serious. This really wasn’t like him. “Hey,” Nick said, “What’s up?”

  Johnson shook his head slowly, still looking down. “I’m in trouble,” he said simply.

  Now Nick was really concerned. Jovial, laid-back, devil-may-care Johnson was never in any trouble that he couldn’t see himself out of within a very brief period of time. “Seriously? What sort of trouble?” Now that Nick thought about it, he hadn’t even seen Johnson eating, which was a sure sign that something was wrong.

  “It’s this bet I have,” Johnson began.

  Nick’s heart sank. Gambling? He would never have pegged Johnson as a gambler. Nick said quietly, “Do you need money, Adam?” Nick never called his partner by his first name, but the situation seemed so grave, he thought it was the right thing to say.

  Johnson’s head popped up again. “Well, now that you mention it…,” he had a tiny twinkle in his eye, but it disappeared as he became lost in thought again.

  “Okay, out with it!” Nick ordered.

  Johnson sighed. “Fine. You’ll find out soon enough. I’ve got a bet with the wife.”

  Nick relaxed with relief. At least it wasn’t money. Or not serious money, at any rate. “And?” he said.

  “And I’m losing.”

  “So what’s the bet?”

  Johnson shook his head with dismay again. “All right, here’s the whole story. She made me go to the doctor for my snoring. She said it’s like a freight train and she can’t sleep. I bought her earplugs, but let’s just say that that didn’t go over well. So, I went to the doctor. He said I have sleep apnea. And high blood pressure. And I needed to lose weight. Otherwise, I’ll have to wear some contraption when I sleep in case I don’t breathe enough, and I’ll have to go on some kind of blood pressure medication.”